J.F.Kerry Falls in a Trap

The funniest story in the media this week, and only the latest of many that demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the Mainstream Media is in lockstep with the Democrat party, is this widely reported story:

"Kerry vows to disprove Swiftboat Claims"

A brief recap: When John F. Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts) decided to run for President in 2004 and highlighted his service in Vietnam as a reason to vote for him, a sizeable portion of the soldiers who had served in his unit - serving on the "Swiftboats" - took exception and ran ads stating their opinion that he was unfit for command. One of the many "big lies" constantly repeated by Democrats (such as Bush stole the elections, Bush "lied" us into Iraq, etc) is that the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth - a 527 organization made possible by the Campaign Finance Reform laws - unfairly personally "smeared" candidate Kerry with unsubstantiated claims questioning his military service. In fact, this lie has been parroted so many times by Democrat activists that it has achieved verb status - as in "to Swiftboat" someone is to unfairly smear them with personal lies."

My own evaluation of the issue, after watching the ads and reading the book written by the SVT's, is that they were not unsubstantiated lies, but personal observations and testimony of soldiers who served with Kerry and in his unit. Their observations had credibility and weight. Almost to a man, and including all of the officers in Kerry's chain of command, they signed a letter saying that Kerry was lying about his service and was unfit for command.

The whole controversy of who was right, Kerry or the Swiftboaters, could be resolved by an examination of the Senator's military records. The problem, of course, is that the Senator never released his records. He has refused to this day to sign the Form 180 to release his records. George Bush signed his, but Kerry has not. So, in the absence of the records it is the SVT's word against the Senator's.

That brings us to the current news story. Principal Swiftboat financer, T. Boone Pickens, has been upset that the Democrat partisans have been able to effectively malign the veterans with the new verb "to Swiftboat", and made an offer at a Washington party of $1 million to anyone who can disprove any of the SVT's ad claims. John Kerry sent Pickens a letter offering to take up the challenge. The letter reads, in part:

I welcome the opportunity to prove that you are a man of your word and that the
so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" lied. While I am prepared to show they
lied on allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one
million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am prepared to
prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.

The AP article reporting Senator Kerry's letter received widespread reporting in the MSM. Why is this funny? For two reasons:

1. This is not news! The Senator has not yet disproved the claims, only offered to. That's news? He's been saying that since the 2004 election cycle. When and if he actually disproves the claims, then it will be news. Apparently the major media can no longer discern real news from press releases.

2. He's fallen into the trap of the Swiftboaters. How is he going to disprove the claims? On what evidence?

Pickens responded to Sen. Kerry saying he would be glad to entertain his challenge, and that the appropriate evidence to dispute ad claims would be the Senator's military records. That's what the SVT's have been demanding since 2004, the release of Kerry's records.

The left-wingers (DemocraticUnderground, Daily Kos, etc.) are pinging on this news this week. First that Kerry had won a big victory by accepting the challenge, and then that Pickens had reneged on the bet. Have they lost the ability to reason on the left? Kerry did not win the bet by accepting the bet - he still has to disprove the claims. Pickens did not renege by stating the acceptable evidence of proof - Kerry's military records. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of celebrating Kerry's win.

So, what is the Senator to do now? He's publicly said he's going to disprove the claims. The release of his records is what it will take. The release of his records is what he's been successfully avoiding until now. Thus, he's fallen into the trap. Either he releases the records, which will be damaging to him, or he won't and he will fail to disprove the claims.

Classic. And very funny.

My eternal thanks to the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, for speaking the truth about the dishonorable Senator and contributing to his defeat.

"Redacted" - and the Liberal value on being "Provacative"

Honestly, I've come to believe - from news stories and current events - that today's liberals or progressives or whatever they want to call themselves - have become deranged. (Derange - defined by Webster as "to disturb the operation of" or "to become insane". Either works for me.) They're lost. Misguided. Their moral and intellectual compass completely skewed. Let's look at three quick examples: First example: I was listening to a radio program regarding the re-emergence of disgraced University of Colarado professor Ward Churchill. Churchill, you may recall disgraced himself and his University after 9/11 by implying that the victims of the attack deserved it in a sense because they were all "little Eichman's" contributing to oppressing others. A truly off the charts insane comment, by a professor who is teaching your children. The University went through a long protracted effort to fire him, and really only succeeded by proving that the good professor had engaged in plagarisim as well. It's tough to fire a bad professor, but they did it - to their credit. So, why is the professor back in the news? Well, it seems like some students on campus - believing that Churchill had been done wrong, have invited him to continue teaching his class on campus as an invited guest. A guest speaker of sorts. The particular hapless skull-full-of-mush college student who was the spokesman interviewed that day on the radio to defend Churchill opined thusly: he believed that our First Amendment freedoms were gravely damaged by Churchill's firing and that the good professor was only doing the main job of University professor's - being "provocative" to make the students think. I have two main problems with the student's opinion: 1. The First Amendment is not under fire in this case. Students often totally misstate their "freedom of speech", which they apparently see as all-encompassing and a complete get-out-of-jail-free card to say anything they want with no consequences. For the record: the First Amendment only proscribes the Federal Government from censoring speech - mostly political speech. What part of "Congress shall make no law...." does the student not understand. The University of Colorado is not Congress, and is free to fire professors for incompetent performance, including making outlandish and eggregious statements as part of their duties. 2. The University's main job is not to be provactive, but to provide a quality education for which you the consumer are paying. It is absolutely their role to have competent professors in the classroom, and when a professor demonstrates his incompetence with raw gibberish like the "little Eichman's" claim it is their obligation to the consumer (the student) to remove him from his teaching duties. Period. Second example: The University of Delaware's Delaware's Office of Residence Life Diversity Facilitation Training contained, until caught by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a training document for University housing residents which reads in part: "A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. " Really? All white people are racists? People of color cannot be? This is the quality of a University education in America now, after decades of dominance by liberals. Again, the token student trotted out to defend the document opined that the University was just doing it's job to be "provacative" and that our First Amendment rights were under fire if this training was revoked. Idiots. What do these idiot college students, under the tutelage of an overwhelming liberal faculty value? Facts? No. Balance? No. A competent education? No. They value being "provocative" over all else. And, to top it off, they think their freedom's are under fire if there are any consequences for outrageous incompetence. It's truly dispiriting. As a third example, let's look at the Hollywood movie released this week - amid a flurry of Hollywood anti-war screeds - called "Redacted", by Director Brian De Palma and financed by billionaire Mark Cuban. There are literally thousands of stories to be told about the Iraq War, and about the U.S. military troops that are fighting it. Positive stories about our troops and negative ones, and arguably more positive than negative by far. Which story you choose to focus on tells me more about you than about the troops. De Palma chose to tell the absolute worst story there is to tell about U.S. troops. It is a true story, the criminal action of one squad of soldiers who raped a young Iraqi girl and killed her family to cover it up. Awful. The worst of the worst. The army has dealt with those soldiers and they are behind bars where they deserve to be. Now, thanks to DePalma, that awful story is up on the big screen for the whole world to see and to judge our troops by. Not the best of our military, but the absolute worst. It will hurt our troops, who are still in harm's way in combat, this movie. Especially since not many in America will choose to see it and the producer's will have to recoup their investment with foreign DVD sales. This movie will hurt our country. So why did Brian De Palma make it? And why did Mark Cuban finance it? Because they are liberals, and they value being "provacative" over all else. Despicable. By making this movie, Mr. De Palma and Mr. Cuban tell us how they see our military - in the worst possible way. Just for the record, I would never in a million years pay money to see our military portrayed in the worst possible light, especially while we are still at war. Their movie will tank, and they won't understand why. Be ready for Mr. De Palma and Mr. Cuban to cry foul for their First Amendment rights if there is any backlash over their despicable product. Again, the First Amendment doesn't apply to poor box office. The U.S. Government is not preventing it's showing. Please, America. Show that you are not deranged. Lost. Morally askew. Do not under any circumstances reward Mr. De Palma and Mr. Cuban's assualt on our troops with your box office dollar. Only your contemp.

Memo to Hollywood: We're Still at War

One of my saddest current political observations is that there is a sizable portion of America, lead by the elite in the media and in Hollywood, who do not understand that we are in an war of civilizations against a jihadist Islam that is bent on our destruction.

I give you the latest slew of entertainment offerings as evidence.

Take first, for example, the slew of anti-war polemics streaming out of Hollywood: "Rendition" and "Lions for Lambs" in America and "Redacted" overseas. Hollywood biggies - like Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep - certain that all Americans are against Bush and "his war", are pouring out their best leftist Anti-American screeds. Never mind that making anti-war (and in the case of "Redacted", anti-troops) movies while we have troops still in the combat arena being shot at will EMBOLDEN OUR ENEMIES AND PUT OUR TROOPS IN MORE DANGER! Never mind that, they're being noble.

Strange then, that if America is so anti-war, that their movies are tanking at the box office. "Lions for Lambs" opened this week with an all-star cast and a massive marketing campaign and took in a very weak $6 million dollars. Maybe movies just don't make money anymore? - wondered one entertainment critic. Oh wait - Denzel's movie "American Gangster" (an anti-drug smuggling movie) opened the same weekend and took in $80 million. Maybe Americans are just not ready for a war movie yet - offered another Hollywood critic. Here's news, oh clueless one - the majority of Americans do not want to pay for two hours of big screen anti-Americanism while we STILL HAVE TROOPS IN COMBAT. Idiots.

It's okay, though, for the Hollywood moguls. They know that the majority of their profits anymore come from overseas sales and that these anti-American movies will sell well there. Perhaps sold to Al-Qaida movie chains, and advertised on Al-Jazeera. How despicable is this.

As a second example, I offer you the latest big video game offering for the Playstation 3. I saw it premiered this week on UFC's Ultimate Fighter. It's called "Assassin's Secret", and it's about a secret band of assassin's in the 12th century who are called out to kill the 9 men who are seeking to control the world and need killing. Special effects and amazing graphics and all. You get to be the "assassins" who hunt down and kill the men with red crosses on their chest. Cool.

The problem: if you know anything about 12th century history, or if you watch even a minute of the preview of "Assassins Secret", you'll understand that the "good guys" are Islamic assassins and that the bad guys are Christian Crusaders.

Are you kidding me? We're going to market a story line to a whole new generation of skulls-full-of-mush video gamers that sells the leftist relativism that the Crusaders were the ultimate evil in the world and the Islamic assassins are right in killing them? Really? When we have suicide-bombers tracking down "infidels" all over the middle east? Unbelievable.

Look, I was fed that crap in history class when I was growing up. That the Crusades were an unprovoked evil stain on the history of Christianity. No mention of the 400 years of volent Muslim expansion into Europe preceeding it. No mention of western civilization enduring 400 years of 9/11's before the took up arms and fought back. Like we are fighting back now.

So, I'm going to call bullshit on this game. It's harmful leftist indoctrination posing as a game. We should reject it, like movie-goers are rejecting the stream of leftist anti-American war bilge at the cineplex.

And, by the way, if this is the quality of propaganda that the Hollywood screenwriters are turning out - they can just stay on strike. It's alright with me.